Breaking your goals down into smaller steps increases your chances of completing them. By organizing your work in steps, you can get a clear idea of where you’re heading, and you can see what you’re accomplishing.
But it takes practice to use this technique effectively. A lot of steps make it overwhelming. Too few, and it lacks a clear starting point. Here are some apps that make it easy to break your tasks into steps!
1. Goals On Track
Goals On Track is a goal-setting program for desktop and iOS devices. Its Sub-Goal software helps you take your goal and break it down into concrete steps. On top of that, Goals On Track offers templates to help you create action plans for your goals. The whole program is based on actionable steps.
Goals On Track offers multiple ways to organize and view your tasks. It also provides tips and guides to help you construct your task list in an effective way, including help segmenting your tasks properly.
Download: GoalsonTrack for iOS (Free, offers in-app purchases)
2. Habitica
Habitica is a great way to gamify your life and your goals, but did you know it can also help you segment your task list? You can add checklists to your Daily tasks, as well as your To-Dos.
Best of all, Habitica will give you greater rewards for a task if you also completed its checklist. This is a great incentive to always segment your tasks.
You can also semi-automate the process if you have recurring tasks with similar steps. First, create a private Guild. Then create a Challenge in that guild, and add To-Dos for each step. Add it by rejoining the Challenge, then leaving it as many times as necessary.
Download: Habitica for iOS | Android (Free, offers in-app purchases)
3. CanPlan
CanPlan is an iPad app that helps you set clear goals and concrete plans. The University of Victoria designed it to help students stay on top of their assignments, but it works for any task list.
You can track your progress by looking at the checked-off steps. Since the steps are part of the main task, you don’t need to do any extra steps to do this. You can also visualize your task with photos, or use inspirational photos to help keep you from getting overwhelmed.
Lastly, you can sort your tasks into categories. Then you can view by category instead of seeing all your tasks at once. This helps you focus on your priorities.
Download: CanPlan for iOS (Free, offers in-app purchases)
4. Quire
There are a lot of to-do list apps out there, and many of them will let you add sub-tasks, but Quire excels at it. You can view all your tasks in the List view, but you can also assign each task a priority level, and group them into one or more sub-lists.
Each sub-list creates a tab, so you can use your sub-lists as steps, with each tab representing a task. You can view sub-lists one at a time to avoid being overwhelmed by a long list. It’s also got tons of tools for scheduling, task assignment, and more.
Best of all, this software is free and works on any mobile device or web browser.
Download: Quire for iOS | Android (Free)
5. Nested Task
The main reason that adding steps to your tasks helps increase productivity is that it helps you focus. By setting a clear starting point and order of priority, the task feels more doable. Nested Task is an Android app that emphasizes a streamlined, focused structure.
Nested Task creates a minimalist to-do list, only showing one specific task or its steps. This way, it avoids overwhelming you with a long list of micro-tasks. The features list is also streamlined, which helps you focus on actually accomplishing your tasks instead of tweaking their settings.
You can track your progress using the points system. Assign each task a point value. This value can represent the importance or difficulty of the tasks. It’s up to you! Nested Task will keep track of how many points are left for each project.
Download: Nested Task for Android (Free)
Maximize Productivity With Chunking
Breaking your goals into smaller chunks will help you gain a sense of priority and focus. It also improves your overall productivity. If you struggle with an overwhelming to-do list or just crave more organization, these apps can help!
Once you have practice breaking your tasks into segments, you can bring that technique to other tools, such as Microsoft Office programs, as well!